Forthcoming book chapter in Unfree Labour? Struggles of Migrant and Immigrant Workers in Canada, edited by Aziz Choudry and Adrian A. Smith. PM Press, 2016. Page 1 of 13 Struggling against History: Migrant Farm Worker Organizing in British Columbia Adriana Paz Ramirez and Jennifer Jihye Chun On July 26, 2006 the British Columbia (BC) chapter of the grassroots collective Justicia for Migrant Workers (J4MW) hosted a documentary film screening of El Contrato about the plight of migrant farmworkers under Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). 1 J4MW activists sought to raise money for workers from Mexico who were facing deportation and a potential lifetime ban from SAWP program after walking off their jobs. Although Canadian labour laws protect workers’ right to strike, the protesting workers faced immediate retaliation from employers and the Mexican Consulate for openly challenging their unjust living and working conditions. At the time there was little public understanding of the restrictive and dehumanizing conditions of guest worker programs in BC, which joined SAWP in 2004, nearly five decades after Ontario as part of the province’s aggressive expansion of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program in a variety of low-paid occupations. Much to the surprise of the J4MW activists, the event attracted a packed audience, including people from Abbotsford, Delta, Chilliwack and other Fraser Valley farming towns located over 70 km from Vancouver. Former leaders of the Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU), the first farmworker union established in Canada in 1980, were also in attendance. Few people, including J4MW activists, knew about the CFU’s history. According to local historian Sadhu Binning (1986: 14-15), the CFU was not just “another union”; it was “moral” force that galvanized a broad base of unions, community organizations, religious leaders, women’s groups, progressive lawyers, political party officials, artists, academics and students to support BC farmworkers, who at the time consisted primarily of South Asian immigrants from Punjab, India. Charan Gill, who still serves as CFU Secretary Treasurer—an entirely symbolic position—and moved on to lead one of the largest immigrant serving agencies in BC’s Lower Mainland, commended the “young people” of J4MW, yet he also expressed deep pessimism. As passionate union organizers, he and other CFU leaders rose up and fought, and tried many times and in different ways, but they finally had to give up, unable to sustain the CFU’s victories in the face of employer backlash, a deepening economic recession, a complex legal environment and diminishing organizational resources. Later that evening Gill and other former CFU leaders later told J4MW activists that if organizing farmworkers with full citizenship rights was nearly impossible, organizing migrant farmworkers on temporary work visas was indeed an impossibility. The encounters between former CFU leaders and J4MW activists raise important questions about migrant farmworkers organizing in BC, as well as the complex ways in which past struggles bear on the present. The CFU’s fight on the farms, the streets and in the legal arena garnered historic victories for BC farmworkers; however, its gains were short-lived, not only for BC’s farmworker communities but also in the public memory. How do we make sense of the contradictory messages of former CFU leaders, who recognize the urgency of challenging the migrant farm labour system, yet view such efforts as hopeless? What lessons can be learned from the CFU’s historic struggles, as a new generation of migrant farmworkers and their advocates strive to challenge the unequal and